Tom Coburn: “I have the assurance of our leadership. What I want is the assurance of the Women's Caucus that they want women in this…”

What we need is a simpler, fairer, and flatter tax code, so that everybody pays something.

We have something we call 'maintenance of effort' that we use in other programs, educational programs, when there is Federal money, we say to States, 'You have to maintain effort.'

That is when we do our best work here.

the question is--and my advice to the Committee is to look at the roles that the Federal Government has taken over that would be better and more efficiently done at the State level.